On August 25, MPD cops shot and killed An'Twan Gilmore as he tried to drive away after being confronted for sleeping in his car at NY Ave and FL Ave NE. The following night, furious protesters assembled at the same spot and held a confrontational march down FL Ave into town. Any police cars caught in the march were instantly surrounded and heckled. Cops backed off from confronting these marchers, presumably for fear of causing it to blow all the way up.

As the official march ended at Ga Ave amd V st, word went out of an MPD "central communications" facility within marching range. The DC government's website lists a "Public Safety Communications Center" at McMillan Drive, NW, which they boast is heavily defended. Rumors went out thought that it was hidden away somewhere much closer. If this was taken by protesters, cops on the streets would be at least temporarily cut off from their dispatchers. About a third of the marchers went south to U st(wrong way for McMillan Drive), but lacking the numbers to march all the way to McMillan Drive or reliable intel on a closer central communications office, they decided to hold Ga Ave and U St/Fl Ave. That intersection was held all the way to somewhere near 11PM.

One assault on protesters by police would have most likely caused the entire crowd to descend upon whichever cop started it. Usually cops use this as a trap to arrest people, but closing the trap would have been difficult to impossible. Also in the areas the march went the cops would have risked unknown numbers of bystanders joining the fight. In this way, the march resembled the big Freddie Gray march in Baltimore that took place earlier on the same day the uprising started there in 2015. If this one had detonated, MPD would have been taken right back to May 29, 2020-this time for an incident on their own watch.

MPD body camera footage of the shooting appears to have been deliberately obstructed by a "protective shield" used by their shooter. While MPD claims to have seen a gun and the car and later recovered it, this means a Black man has been executed essentially for sleeping in his car and owning a gun. Under that so-called Constitution the cops are supposed to follow, a gun in a car is no more illegal than a stack of newspapers. White militiamen seen with guns are rarely shot at by police, even in DC. The right-wing terrorist claiming to have a bomb in his pickup truck was NOT shot by police, as yet another example.

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